The present invention relates generally to social networking services, and more particularly to facilitating a user's creation of a group of other users from among the user's connections in the user's social network. As used herein, a “user” can be an individual or an entity (such as a business or third party application). The term “connection” refers individuals and entities with which a user of the social networking service may form a connection, association, or other relationship.
Users of social networking services may form connections, associations, or other relationships with other users based on real-life interactions, online interactions, or a mixture of both. For example, users may be from the same geographic location, may travel in the same circle of friends, or may have attended the same college or university. Content posted by a user may be made available to the user's connections via one or more of various communication channels in the social networking system, such as a newsfeed or stream. A user may create a list of connections (also referred to as a “friend list”) to prioritize the content available in the newsfeed or stream.
Social networking systems often make use of user-defined groups of connections. For example, a user may wish to publish information to certain user-defined groups of the user's connections in the social networking system, or the user may wish to define privacy settings or other access rights to the user's content according to such user-defined groups. As a user becomes connected with more users in the social networking system over time, mechanisms that allow a user to create groups of the user's connections become highly labor-intensive and often lead to incomplete or smaller lists because of the inherent difficulty in grouping a user's connections. Conventional social networking services lack a connection grouping mechanism that provides users with relevant suggestions for additional connections to add to an existing group of connections. Consequently, users are less likely to take advantage of groups of connections, and the user experience of the social networking service is diminished.